Our approach
This is EllisTalks eLearning. This is Isaac – our flagship eLearning platform. We can quickly elevate your sales reps knowledge and enable them to easily articulate your products and technologies without having to lean as heavily on your pre-sales team.
About Ellistalks
EllisTalks is the intersection of Chris Ellis’ thirty plus years in the networking and cyber security industry with Mike Rouleau’s award-winning, creative direction and innovative graphical background in the advertising realm.
The Achilles heal of e-training/learning can be captured in one word: boring. Previously, e-learning was viewed as sober, disruptive, mandatory learning where users where looking at the same document and topics over and over, regardless of the subject matter presented. Enter EllisTalks’ Izaac: by combining clear and concise user interfaces with engaging visuals, animation, games, quizzes, and strong sales content we engage the sales team by grabbing their attention creating a strong retention factor.
Let Izaac quickly and effectively elevate your Sales representatives and SE’s knowledge, enabling them to master your products and technologies and easily articulate your value proposition and key differentiators to prospects and customers.
We use our thirty plus years in the networking and cyber security industry to tailor your SE and sales training
Trusted Expert Team
Our trusted expert team have a proven track record working with clients to draw out their salient product training requirements and creating effective learning materials with stunning visuals.
Modular Learning
Focused, short modules allow your sales and pre-sales teams to work at their pace, when, where and how they want to. Modules allow for your team to learn in whichever order is convenient to them.
Entertaining Content
Forget death by PowerPoint, we offer graphical, moving entertaining content that makes learning more interesting, resulting in a higher level of retention for a better learning experience.
Top 5 things every SE should know
1. Know your Customer (including Support Tickets).
This is the number one best SE tip ever: prior to any meeting with an existing customer, check for any open tickets or recent support activities. They may insist on talking about outstanding issues before letting you even start with your presentation that you came to discuss, and when that happens – and it will happen – being prepared and aware of any open tickets will show your customer that you care, are aware of the issues and that you are keen to help get them resolved. Finish with an offer to continue monitoring the tickets and then transition to your sales pitch.
Another tip is to seek out any recent and interesting news about the company or the people that you are meeting with – think LinkedIn or a basic google search. This will help break the ice for a new customer you are meeting with, or simply become a way to get a discussion started. Being over-prepared should be an obsession!
2. Know your Sales Plan.
Take steps during your weekly sales call to understand any sales plans your sales rep may have created for themselves. If they have not already set up weekly sales calls then take the initiative to do so yourself. My experience has proven that the best SEs are not the geeks in the closet that can rattle off Pi to 50 decimal points. Being technical is table stakes for becoming an SE, but the ones that go to club – and where you will find the most success – is when you jumpstart your sales savvy and become fully immersed in the sales cycle. In my 15 years experience as an SE, I have come to learn that some sales reps excel at bringing the SE into the loop, but others – especially if you are working with several reps – may not share everything they are working on with you. Work tactically with them to understand which are the key accounts, and find gaps in the customers product matrix, and from there develop a strategy for getting those products and their value propositions in front of those accounts.
3. Whiteboarding.
Break away from the unextraordinary and either skip the PowerPoint presentation entirely or use a light deck (3 slides max) and choose to stand up and work out ideas on the customer’s whiteboard or flipchart if available. Bring your own markers with you because the ones in your customers boardrooms will not work (guaranteed). If you are delivering the presentation virtually, then look into options for creating effective online presentations, like Miro or Lucidspark.
4. Know the People at the Table.
A technique I always found incredibly effective was to draw the shape of the meeting room on a note pad and then quickly jot down everyone’s first name at their table location as they are being introduced. Then, during your presentation or while at the whiteboard, use your customer’s names during your pitch; it never fails to impress people how quickly you have learnt their names and helps make an immediate connection; it demonstrates a keen interest in them and helps build your reputation as a trusted partner.
5. Know your Customer Part II: Cross-Sell.
Finally, create a Product or Sales-matrix prior to your customer calls (lean on SFDC data if you use Salesforce). Knowing which products your customer is using – and equally important, the ones they are not – will help guide your discussion and lead to better sales outcomes. If the original focus of the sales call was to discuss product “A”, then prepare deeply for that topic but also have product “B” and “C” ready at your fingertips and be ready to bring them up as part of a natural segue. It’s amazing how times I’ve heard a customer say, “I didn’t know that you were in that line of business.”. Always be ready to cross-sell another of your products regardless of the initial purpose for the meeting.